The Principle of Causality
This principle states that every event has a cause. The principle has two important corollaries:
The principle of determinism: any cause has effect, and without a cause has an effect, and without a cause it is impossible to have an effect.
The principle of uniformity of nature: similar causes entail similar effects.
It has been a 'long-time assumption by many scientists of all times that there are certain laws governing our physical universe. The principle of causality is the postulate that gives meaning to the application of any law used to ex plain natural phenomena.
In the Qur'an, we find reference to this principle in several contexts:
There are several verses that speak about unchangeable patterns of Allah in the universe:
وَلَا يَحِيقُ الْمَكْرُ السَّيِّئُ إِلَّا بِأَهْلِهِ
فَهَلْ يَنْظُرُونَ إِلَّا سُنَّتَ الْأَوَّلِينَ
فَلَنْ تَجِدَ لِسُنَّتِ اللَّهِ تَبْدِيلًا وَلَنْ تَجِدَ لِسُنَّتِ اللَّهِ تَحْوِيلًا
Then should they wait for aught except the way of former people? For you shall not find any alternation in the Course of Allah (35:43).
فَأَقِمْ وَجْهَكَ لِلدِّينِ حَنِيفًا
فِطْرَتَ اللَّهِ الَّتِي فَطَرَ النَّاسَ عَلَيْهَا
لَا تَبْدِيلَ لِخَلْقِ اللَّهِ
The nature made by Allah in which He has made men; there is no altering of Allah's creation (30:30).
There are many verses that talk about fixed mechanisms for the occurrence of certain events:
وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنْسَانَ مِنْ سُلَالَةٍ مِنْ طِينٍ
And certainly We created man of an extract of clay (23-12).
الَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ الْأَرْضَ فِرَاشًا وَالسَّمَاءَ بِنَاءً وَأَنْزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَخْرَجَ بِهِ مِنَ الثَّمَرَاتِ رِزْقًا لَكُمْ
And (Who) sends down rain from the cloud then brings forth with it subsistence for you (2:22).
Some of the Qur’anic verses explain the intermediary role of some events in the appearance of others:
وَأَرْسَلَ عَلَيْهِمْ طَيْرًا أَبَابِيلَ تَرْمِيهِمْ بِحِجَارَةٍ مِنْ سِجِّيلٍ
And sent down upon them birds in flocks, casting them against stones of baked clay (105:3-4).
قَاتِلُوهُمْ يُعَذِّبْهُمُ اللَّهُ بِأَيْدِيكُمْ وَيُخْزِهِمْ وَيَنْصُرْكُمْ
Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands . (9:14).
On the other hand, there are some verses in the Qur’an that attribute the creation and direction of the world to Allah:
قُلْ مَنْ رَبُّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ قُلِ اللَّهُ
Say: Allah is the Creator of all things (13:16).
وَالنُّجُومَ مُسَخَّرَاتٍ بِأَمْرِهِ
Surely His is the Creation and Command (7:54).
Putting these two sets of verses together, one can conclude that everything is realized by Allah's will, but through special channels. Verses of the following type confirm this interpretation:
وَالْبَلَدُ الطَّيِّبُ يَخْرُجُ نَبَاتُهُ بِإِذْنِ رَبِّهِ وَالَّذِي خَبُثَ لَا يَخْرُجُ إِلَّا نَكِدًا
And as for the good land, its vegetation springs forth (abundantly) by the permission of its Lord; and (as for) that which is inferior (its herbage) comes forth but scantly (7:58).
This verse indicates that although Allah's will is necessary for the growth of the plants, the fertility of the land is important, too. Net every sort of plant, can be raised in every sort of land.
Some well-known Muslim theologians (like Imam Ghazfili and Imam Razi) of the Asharite school rejected necessary causal relations (determinism) in the physical world and said that physical means have no role in the realization of natural phenomena.
The cause of any occurrence is Allah's will, except that it is Allah's habit to create what we call "effect" after what we call "cause;' without any relation between them that necessitates the "effect" to follow the "cause." If Allah does not want it, the so-called effect will not follow the so-called cause.
The reason these theologians denied determinism is that they thought the assumption of necessary causal relations would negate Allah's unlimited power and leave no room for miracles. This conclusion, however, is not right, because what is commonly called a cause is simply an intermediary or preparing cause, rather than the efficient cause.
The role of intermediary means is to prepare the ground for the creation of everything, but He creates everything through definite intermediary and preparing causes, and these are themselves created by Allah. The need for the presence of intermediaries is not due to any deficiency in the Creator, but is related to deficiencies in the receivers of Allah's effusion.
After the appearance of quantum theory in physics and the presentation of the principle .of uncertainty by W. Heisenberg in the 1930s, some of the founders of this theory denied the principle of determinism and the principle of uniformity of nature in the atomic realm. In their view all laws of microphysics have a statistical status, referring to averages drawn from numerous similar observations, and admitting exceptions for single observations.
Most physicists, with the exception of some prominent ones like Planck and Einstein, accepted the new theory and its orthodox interpretation, a situation that still exists, although the lapse of time has increased the number of opponents.
Einstein and Planck and other prominent physicists could not accept that laws of probability are governing the universe. For them the events in nature should ultimately be explained in terms of absolute laws, and a deterministic foundation should underlie the apparent statistical behavior. One uses the laws of probability either because the underlying laws are not precisely known or because of the difficulties in handling large numbers.
In this regard, Einstein made the following comment:
I cannot but confess that I attach only a transitory importance to this interpretation. I still believe in the possibility of a model of reality-that is to say of a theory which represents things themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence
.
And in his letter to Max Born of December 1926, Einstein wrote:
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing dice
.
Unfortunately, in recent years we have come across some Muslim scholars who have revived the forsaken theory of the haris, citing quantum mechanics as a proof of their claims. We refute this kind of outlook on the following grounds:
If we deny the validity of the principle of causality in the atomic and subatomic world, this would mean defacing this principle in relation to the whole world, because causality relates different parts of the world together.
Should the principle of causality tum out to be untrue, there would be no relationships between the premises of an argument and its conclusion, because the premises are the cause of one's accepting the conclusion. Without the principle of causality, nothing should be the conclusion of an argument, and from any set of premises one can derive any conclusion, and there would be no difference between proving something and not proving it.
It is for this reason that even those who refute the principle of causality ae implicitly using this principle, because if they did not believe that their argument would cause a change in our belief, they would not attempt to argue with us
.
As martyred professor Murtada Mutahhari
and martyred Ayatollah Sadr
have pointed out, the impossibility of prediction in the atomic domain is not due to lack of determinism, but is a result of our ignorance about the deterministic laws governing atomic phenomena, and this could be either because our present experimental and theoretical knowledge is incomplete or because we cannot measure the effect of the observer on his measurement precisely.
In any event, one should be aware that our failure to discover determinism in the atomic domain does not imply that necessary causal relations do not hold and we do not have any right to claim that we have discovered all parameters relevant to this domain.
At this point it seems appropriate to quote what Dirac wrote in 1979:
It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes which one made in passing from Bohr's or bits to a quantum mechanics. Someday a new relativistic quantum mechanics will be discovered in which we don't have these infinites occurring at all.
It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted. This determinism will be introduced only at the expense of abandoning some other preconceptions which physicists now hold, and which it is not sensible to try to get at now.
So under the conditions I think it is very likely, or at any rate quite possible, that in the long run Einstein will tum out to be correct, even though for the time being physicists have to accept the Bohr's probability interpretation-especially if they have examinations in front of them
.
In short, by the negation of causality nothing would be a requisite for another, and anything could be derived from anything; so there would be no room for science. Science has to accept the principle of causality with all its corollaries, so that its existence could be meaningful.
0%
Author: Dr. Mahdi Golshani
